What's The Latest On Polar Bears?

Published: October - 2000

One of the great new hunts that Americans have been able to enjoy in recent years takes place up on the ice in the Northwest Territories of Canada. I'm referring to polar bear hunting, of course, which reopened to US citizens when President Clinton signed into law the Marine Mammal Protection Act Amendments of 1994. Actually, these amendments didn't open polar bear hunting (it was already open). What they did was legalize the importation of polar bear trophies for the first time in 20 years, provided that certain conditions were met. Specifically, the US government required Canada to have a monitored and enforced sporthunting program based on scientifically sound sustainable quotas. Moreover, the program had to be in compliance with CITES and other international agreements, plus Canada had to prove that the import of trophies would not contribute to the illegal trade in bear parts.

While everyone in the hunting community felt that all of these conditions clearly had been met, the US Fish and Wildlife Service decided to review each item in detail and issue specific rules governing import. The result has been a piecemeal approach to allowing the import of polar bear trophies. The first major disappointment was in 1995 when the US Fish and Wildlife Service decided to prevent polar bear imports from all of the central and eastern Arctic - where 80 percent of the sport hunts for polar bear take place. Only bears from the relatively insignificant western Arctic were to be allowed in.

Different reasons were given for the ban, but the most serious one was a perceived overharvest in many units. In the meantime, American hunters had flocked to Canada in the widespread belief that all sporthunted trophies would be importable. Trophies taken in the banned hunting areas ended up being un-importable. To be sure, in 1995, Congress did pass an act grandfathering in all trophies taken before the 1994 amendment. Still, that did not affect those trophies taken between 1994 and the time of the USFW's ruling in 1995.